


Help, I'm Alive!

by thehaikubandit



Series: Memento Mori (Friendship is Keay) [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gerry's driving now!, it's not Jon, so avoid that if you need to, surprise, the Unknowing happened but only one of them woke up, warning for hospitals like a lot of hospital stuff, what should you do if you accidentally get a body? put on some eyeliner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23138539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehaikubandit/pseuds/thehaikubandit
Summary: Gerry wakes up from their coma, but Jon stays trapped and dreaming. And then to add insult to injury, Gerry has to deal with hospital tests. Rude.
Series: Memento Mori (Friendship is Keay) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647388
Comments: 54
Kudos: 194





	Help, I'm Alive!

Gerry yelled in frustration as Elias vanished from Jon’s mind. On one hand, he’d wanted Elias gone. On the other, it had been so satisfying to finally get some measure of revenge for everything that bastard had done to him, everyone in the Archives, and especially to Jon. But he’d vanished, and Gerry still here, stuck inside Jon’s nightmares.

“Just the two of us again,” he told Jon, who didn’t respond. He’d stopped responding a while ago.

Gerry wanted to scream. He wanted Jon to wake up. He just wanted to leave. Jon had gone and died during all the chaos of the Unknowing, but he was still fucking trapped. When would he finally be allowed to die?

“I’m sorry,” he said to Jon. “I can’t keep doing this.”

There was a yellow door in front of Jon. Gerry watched as he turned away from it. Again. He’d walk towards the ants and continue the same loop that he always did. Gerry knew what waited on the other side, the complex and disorientating maze that was both a place and a person. He had Jon’s memories of Michael, their shared memories of Helen. Gerry had his own memories of Michael too.

“I’m going for a walk,” he told Jon. “I’ll probably see you around.”

He didn’t expect the dreams to let him go; he knew that it was only a matter of time before he’d be dragged back to wherever Jon was.

So, when Gerry woke, gasping and spluttering with a tube down his throat, he didn’t know what to do. For the first time in years he _felt_ , truly felt. He gagged and coughed and then suddenly there was someone there, pulling the tube out of his throat. How could it have been his throat? He was dead, he didn’t have one!

“Gently, gently,” soothed a voice. “That’s it, slow breaths.”

At a loss for what else to do, Gerry followed the instructions. He was overwhelmed by the feeling of sheets against skin, the awareness of a needle in an arm, of more tubes in places that, well, he didn’t want to think about. The buzzing and beeping all around him was so loud he could barely stand it.

He moved a finger and saw it twitch in front of him. He knew that hand. It was the same hand he’d been looking at for a while. Jon’s hand. So how was he moving it? 

He did it again, moved another finger. And another. And another. All his attention was now on that hand, the frantic voices and beeping forgotten. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, he lifted it to his face. Or was it Jon’s face? He ran the hand over the face and gasped at the feeling.

The muffled voices faded in and out of his awareness.

“… lucky to be alive… accident… coma for five days…”

“Who am I?” he asked, with a great deal of effort. The voice was croaky and definitely not his own.

“Your name is Jonathan Sims, you’re in the ICU ward of the Royal London Hospital.”

“I’m Jon?”

He wasn’t though. He knew that he wasn’t, he was still Gerard Keay. He had to be. But if he was here, where was Jon? He tried to remember, tried to think where he could be. Then he heard the familiar crunch of computer keys. No. Oh no. He wouldn’t go back. He _couldn’t_ go back there. Gerry wrenched his mind away and the sound faded. So, Jon was still dreaming. But he wasn’t. Now what did he do?

For the first few hours the choice was taken away from him. Doctors and nurses swarmed around him and he couldn’t tell if they were the same faces or different ones. They largely spoke over him, talking to each other about vital signs and numbers. Something about Scotland? Gerry tuned them out, focusing on moving one body part at a time, but there was only so long he could lie there for.

“I need to stand,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I have to go.”

He started to move himself, arms shaking with the effort.

“Whoa,” came a voice. “Lie back down, Jon.”

“I. Need. To. Stand.”

“You’re in the ICU at Royal London,” the voice said in a soothing, patronising manner. “Your name is Jonathan Sims and -”

“I know,” yelled Gerry, throat throbbing in pain. “I need to stand up.”

“Just – just wait one minute, okay, love?”

Gerry lay back down impatiently as a nurse, she must have been the one talking, hurried off to speak to someone. Another nurse still stood beside him, making sure he didn’t move.

“Alright,” was that the same nurse or a new one? It was hard to tell. “We can help you stand, slowly. _With our help._ ”

“Fine, let’s just get it done. I need to go.”

“You won’t be leaving for a little while,” said the nurse. “Let’s start small.”

Gerry didn’t intend to stay any longer than it took him to be able to walk out the door. He’d discharge himself if he had to. He wanted to be away from the beeping, somewhere, anywhere, that it didn’t smell like his death, that clean, antiseptic smell. He wouldn’t die this way again. He’d rather die outside.

The two nurses helped him sit up and move his legs to the edge of the bed. The tubes and machines that he was connected to made it almost as hard as the fact he hadn’t moved a human body in years. But then he was up, the cold floor beneath his feet. And oh, was he crying? It’d been a while since he did that.

He took a step, legs threatening to collapse beneath him, but he didn’t fall. So, he took another.

“Okay, that’s enough Jon,” said the nurse on his left. “Back to bed now.”

“No.”

“You need to sit back down.”

“I need to leave. I won’t die here. Not again.”

“You’re not going to die love, but we can’t have you falling.”

He spent the rest of that day, and most of the next one walking, then sitting back on the bed. He leaned on the nurses less and less. He sipped his own water, breathed the air by himself. And whenever he was sitting, he moved the body. He would learn how to move this thing. And then, he was going to escape.

The second night they removed the catheter. He was able to walk to the bathroom by himself at that point, though they wouldn’t let him use it without someone in the room. And they wouldn’t let him walk further than that. Gerry took his victories where he could.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told the nurses, and the doctors, and even the porter who came to clean the room. “In the morning, I’m going.”

They weren’t happy to find out that he meant it, but, he insisted. And his vitals were all normal enough that they couldn’t keep him. They told him he’d be leaving against medical advice. Gerry didn’t care. They told him they needed to do tests, to make sure he was safe. He didn’t care about that either. He just wanted out.

“Please,” one of the doctors begged. She was young, barely his age. Well, the age he was when he died for the first time, he wasn’t sure how old Jon was. “At least let us bring you back for tests tomorrow.”

Gerry agreed just so they’d let him sign the papers without any more fuss. He signed them without thinking, eyes going wide with panic when he realised he’d used his old signature. Nobody noticed. They were all too busy trying to stop him. They called someone to pick him up, one of the new assistants. Melanie. Her name was Melanie. He knew that, he remembered her. He’d watched her through Jon’s eyes. Clutching an envelope in his hand with the times of his tests, he followed her out to her car. Gerry was proud that he made it all the way there without needing to rest. They barely spoke until they reached the Institute.

He returned to the hospital the next day, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the angry looks from Melanie at the Institute were too much. Maybe it was the way that Martin flinched at the sight of him. They hadn’t taken things well. Maybe it was just a sense that he owed it to Jon to care for his body until he came back. If he came back.

Walking through the doors, Gerry had to tell himself that he hadn’t made a mistake coming here. It was fine. He was in England, in a hospital covered in NHS posters, and not going anywhere near Oncology. He was just here for a few tests, and then he’d leave and never need to come back.

He followed the directions the information desk gave him and found himself in the Radiology department. Not trusting himself to speak, he gave his letter to the receptionist and sat among the other patients, surrounded by out of date tabloids. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes, looking fixedly at the hands that weren’t his. He tried to pretend that Jon was still in control, tried to ignore the screams of Jane Prentiss he heard if he thought too hard about Jon or where he was, and _definitely_ didn’t think about the last time he’d needed any scans.

“Mr Sims?” Someone waved a hand in front of his face. Oh. Right. That was him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Follow me,” said a tall, blond man. His arm was covered in tattooed roses. Gerry liked the way they swirled up past his elbow and into his sleeve.

“So,” the man said as they reached a small room. “You’re here for a few tests today. An MRI and some blood tests. We’ll do the bloods first, because we need to put in a cannula for the dye. We’re also going to take your blood pressure and …”

Gerry wasn’t listening. He was staring instead at the machine behind the man. No. No no no no no. Not again. He couldn’t.

_“Just a quick test and then we’ll have you right back to mom,” the cheery woman told him. “I promise it won’t hurt a bit.”_

_His mum was here? Why was she here? Why wasn’t she dead? He’d finally been free of her and even though he was sick, he was finally free. How had she come back? He wanted to cry. He wanted to be sick. He struggled as they took his hand, the one with the line in it._

_“We just need you to lie on this bed sweetie, it won’t be a minute.”_

_He wouldn’t, if the test was done then they’d take him to his mum. He struggled against them, but the pain medication made him dizzy and tired. His head still ached through it. He retched with fear and pain and dizziness, but nothing came up, not even bile. He hadn’t been able to keep down food for days._

_They got him lying down, and then they fiddled with his cannula, injecting something into it. The bed slid back into a machine and everything was whirring and too close. Was this the Buried? Didn’t it know he was claimed?_

_“See, all done!”_

_“No,” he begged. “Please, don’t take me, please, no.”_

_They didn’t listen to him, moving him back into his wheelchair and taking him ever closer to the ward he’d been staying in. Back to where his mum would be waiting. Someone was screaming, it must have been because of her. Wait, that was his voice. Was he screaming?_

_“Gerard, calm down.”_

_Oh. Gertrude. Good. Maybe she could get rid of his mum. She’d done it once._

_“Safe and back with mom,” the cheery woman said. “It’s okay, sweetie.”_

_Oh._ Oh. _It was just Gertrude. That was all. And then his vision went black and he felt his body begin to shake…_

He was lying down. Why was he lying down?

“Just breathe Jon, it’s all okay.”

Was Jon lying down? But why could he still move? Oh, right. He was Jon now.

“I’m lying down,” he said.

“You had a bit of a turn,” said the blond man. “Are you alright?”

“I… It was the…” And he was weeping, curled into himself, crying with eyes that weren’t his in front of this stranger with the beautiful tattoo.

“Hey, hey,” said the man. “I’ve got you.”

He waited patiently until Gerry cried himself out, and then offered him a tissue.

“I didn’t even get out the needle yet,” he joked. “Most patients wait until then to faint on me.”

“I…” Gerry sat up, pulling Jon’s knees close to his body. “I was… I mean, not me. Someone else. They had one of these tests.”

“They didn’t take it well? It can be a bit nasty if you’re claustrophobic.”

“They…died. Afterwards.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t the… I mean it was… They said it was cancer.”

“But it’s the association huh?”

“Mmm.”

“Well,” said the man. “We aren’t checking you for cancer. As far as I saw in your notes they want to check for any swelling or skull fractures. So, you’re going to be alright. No dying okay?”

“I wish I could.”

“Hey, none of that! You’re lucky to be alive.”

Gerry laughed at that and couldn’t stop. He had no idea…

“Okay,” he said eventually, voice weak from the sobbing and the laughter. “Let’s get this done.”

He closed his eyes when the machine whirred to life, focusing on Jon and where he was, almost feeling the mist of the old graveyard. And then it was over, and he was free to go.

On his way out, Gerry stopped at the hospital pharmacy and bought a cheap black eyeliner pencil. He used it in the bathroom and stared defiantly at the face that wasn’t his. Fuck dying. Death could wait until Jon got back. Gerry was going to make the most of things in the meantime. And that certainly meant spending less time in a hospital. Gerry left. And didn’t come back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always to Gier for all that he does for this series, the ideas, the editing and the encouragement. And thank you 1000 times to Space, who's helping out and editing this series to make it more readable for all of you! Find us on Tumblr at friendship-is-keay and please scream at us about this AU, because fuck knows it's become our entire lives.


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